Monday, 27 April 2015

I've got these fabulous Postage stamps(No1) from Artistic Stamper and I kept them to use for some special project... today is the day... :)

I created Post Cards.

I created 4 1/4" * 6" Post card with white card stock. I started with spraying Dylusions Vibrant Turquoise on it. I spritzed water on it to dilute the color. Next I've done Dyan's famous ghost technique, got some lovely layers. I've used many stamp stamps at the top right corner. Calligraphy Mat12 for text. Leaves stamp is from Leaves A5 set.

I stamped dragonfly twice, once on this post card and second on another white paper. Fussy cut it and adhered it to create layered effect.

Friday, 24 April 2015

Hello all, Alison (butterfly) here, and I'm very sad to say it's my last official posting as part of the Artistic Stamper team. As many of you will know, life's been getting busier, and "something's gotta give"!I've had an amazing time creating with the Artistic Stamper stamps (and the stencils too) over the last two years, and I'm so grateful to Jennie for her generosity and good humoured leadership, and for the chance to work with her fantastic designs. (My textured tags last time didn't use the words "With Thanks" by accident!) It's been a real privilege and pleasure to play alongside such a wonderful team of creative designers too, both past and present.So, this final post is a chance to revisit some favourite projects created over the last two years. You'll notice some of my go-to stamps occurring more than once - the Katy Leitch flowers, the fabulous Journalling Words, the Gibson Girls, and of course my much-loved background staples - the Calligraphy Plates, the Mini Polka Dots - as well as many others. I hope you'll enjoy the little trip down Memory Lane... (You can of course click on the links if you need to see more!)

Another favourite background, and another play with Katy Leitch's fabulous flowers - and more shades of blue and brown. A creature of habit... who, me?!

A round dozen for you there (plus a couple of cheaty extras over at Words and Pictures today, just to decorate the post!), and that's where I'll have to love you and leave you - with immense and grateful thanks for all your wonderful visits and comments here over the last couple of years.I know you'll keep dropping by to enjoy the inspirational work of the rest of the team, and I'll see you out there in Craftyblogland I'm sure. Happy Crafting all!

Sunday, 19 April 2015

... these awesome Artistic Stamper's gardening stamps !Hello, this is Titbelsoeur with you today, organizing her backyard... upcycling, as usual... otherwise it is not me !I have collected can caps and stamped flowers, salads and insects with Archival black ink, then dried the ink and written the names of herbs and vegetables with a permanent pen.And tadammm, here they are, in context :

Thursday, 16 April 2015

If you do not mind, I'll show you a notebook, which I did for a serious young man.

Do you know that the quantity is not always equivalent to quality? Sometimes "less" may be the best choice!
I'm sure that the next photo will be able to demonstrate this assertion.

Yes, you saw it right - I used just a single stamp to decorate this notebook.

As you can see, that was quite enough!

I would like to draw the attention of all those who (as I do) loves shtamping in any place and on any material - stamps of this brand give excellent and precise imprints even at such a "rough" fabrics like this - look at the photo a little closer:

I hope you are also love sometimes do such little things for serious people who alien to the "flowers and bows"!

Friday, 10 April 2015

It won't have escaped your notice that I'm pretty obsessed with the new Flourish Background stamp. I've used it on journalling pages and jars already, and now I've been experimenting with using it to create texture in different ways, and here are two of the tags which arrived as a result.

There's so much gilding and shimmer going on that it was hard to get a photo of them together that does them both justice at the same time - either one was in shadow, or the other was catching too much light - hopefully you'll get the idea from the close-ups as we go!

The texture on the blue/gold tag was created with gesso. I applied a generous coating of heavy gesso to the stamp using Cut'n'Dry foam and pressed it down firmly onto the tag. As well as the relief stamping of the flourish itself, you get lots of additional textural interest as you peel the rubber away (like when you press two gesso'd or painted tags together and peel them apart) - lots of lovely organic ripple patterns.

Then I spritzed away with a combination of Distress Sprays and Perfect Pearl Mists and a few other sparkly sprays.

The colours settled nicely around the flourish textures, but I wanted to highlight them further so I used gilding waxes to zhuzh them up a little.

I love the golden gleam in the sunlight.

The texture on the coppery green tag has a slightly chunkier look. I put a layer of texture paste onto the tag and pressed the Flourish Background onto it, just as I did with the gesso - though I don't seem to have a picture of this one "naked". The texture paste obviously gets you a lot more dimensional bang for your buck!

I started with Dabbers and Distress Paints, including metallics, to get a good covering over the paste, and then added some spritzes of shimmer sprays.

Since I was leaning more to the greens than the blues on this tag, I then found myself reaching for coppery gilding waxes to highlight the textures.

Having created these two backgrounds, I really didn't want to cover them up very much! I don't often reach for flowers - though for some reason I do have a whole box of paper flowers in my stash! - but that seemed to be the way to go with these tags.

They started out fairly innocuously in various colours... so I got busy with the Distress Sprays again. I wanted them to look as if they were emerging out of the tags, so I spritzed them to co-ordinate with the respective colour palettes.

The blue-green ones got a spritz of Tarnished Brass to give a hint of a metallic look to fit with the gilded texture.

The flowers for the coppery green tag went through the same process with slightly different colours, and their metallic spray was the Antique Bronze - a warmer shade.

I liked the gilded look, so I emphasised the metallic shimmer even more by adding some gold embossing powder to the edges of the rose flower petals, large and small. And I used copper embossing powder to add the extra gilding to the tips of the green petals.

It may have been slightly crazy to reach for the kraft card to create my word panels... kraft with all that gilding?! But I really like the contrast.

The "with thanks" wording comes from Katy Leitch's Leaves set, and it's embossed in gold for one tag and in copper for the other.

It needed a bit more of the rustic earthiness to balance the shimmer, so I mounted the tags onto kraft card with padded tape, edging everything with Archival ink to give little more definition.

And some simple twine at the top completes the look - continuing the contrast between baroque gilded texture and rustic earthiness.

So, I hope you like them - a more gilded look than normal for me. I think I've been influenced by Dee's fabulous work here! And with all those flowers these would fit right in to the Flora and Fauna challenge theme here this month. I hope you'll come and join in. Remember, we do have to see some stamping, but it doesn't have to be with Artistic Stamper stamps (though if you do use them you get a double entry into the prize draw!!). Hope to see you there.